Mother
by Kami018
Summary: The day that the 22 year old woman known as Eliza Rook became a mother, was the day that a little alien boy was quite abruptly pulled from his home. God have mercy for this woman, She's gonna need it.
1. Chapter 1

It was always so beautiful when it first snowed here. Though most of my peers would say this place looked somewhat eery with the many sleeping cottonwood trees and the complete silence during the winter. But I always found it eerily beautiful, with only the sound of my thoughts and the crunching of snow underfoot.

Well, I did until I heard the ever recognizable sound of someone, that someone sounding very _child-like_ , crying for help. Without really thinking, I turned towards the source of the heart wrenching sound and picked up the pace.

As I walked, the sounds grew more and more desperate, and soon other sounds were heard.

The sound of men laughing and throwing insults.

I started jogging.

The sound of grunts and fists connecting with flesh.

I started running.

The sound of something breaking.

I was sprinting.

The responding wail.

I grabbed a thick branch along the way.

When I arrived at the scene, mama bear mode was in full swing. I didn't even think before I charged the offending men and swung.

The branch connected with a balding man's skull with a sickening crunch. I kicked another man with a crooked nose in the groin before I whipped the stick at the final aggressor. This man with an ugly burn scar covering half his face grabbed the branch before it made contact. He ripped the branch out of my hands, scratching them up something fierce, and tossed it behind him. He couldn't do much more before I tackled him and place him in a choke hold. The scarred man passed out as soon as I was ripped away by the crooked nose man.

He held my arms down. "What the hell do you think your doing?!" he said this with the slightest of british accents.

I swung my head back, connecting with his nose and breaking it more. I could him yelp, but his hold did not loosen.

"Would you stop that?!"

I slammed the heel of my heavy snow boots into his much lighter high tops. He let go of me that time with a pained cry.

I ran straight for the quivering child and picked them up. They couldn't be more than six years old. I saw red, desiring nothing more than to dish the justice so desperately needed, but I shook this off. I can worry about that after I've taken the child to a safer place and looked over.

As I ran back to my neighborhood, I placed him in my coat to keep him as warm as possible. It was then I could feel a warm and sticky substance through their clothes. I knew that they were hurt, possibly with a broken limb, cracked ribs and a multitude of bruises, but now I knew they were losing that precious life fluid and they losing it fast.

High on adrenaline, I pushed myself even further. In moments, I saw my house with my dad just arriving back home for lunch. When he saw me running, he stepped out of the red pick up to ask me what was wrong.

"Don't ask questions!" I yelled to him before he could say anything, "We need to get to the hospital."

I was close enough by that time for him to see the clearly injured child cradled in my arms and dove back into the car.

I hopped into the passenger seat and yelled, "Hit it!" before we tore through the neighborhood to get to the hospital.

I rocked the child, who was still wailing, and softly murmured reasurances to him. Yes, I did take another look at the child when I hopped into the car to ensure what gender he was.

By the time we reached the hospital, the child was still crying, but much more softly now. Dad dropped me off at the front gate and I rushed inside.

"Help! I have a severely injured child here." I called out into the lobby.

Almost immediately, doctors and nurses rushed to me, took one look at the child, and immediately tried to take the boy away from me.

Me, still being in full mama bear mode, refused to let them have him. And the boy, for his part, had a death grip on my shirt. The doctors recognised this fairly soon and resorted to leading me to the emergency room. They had me set the child one the berth (still holding him) and soothed him when they placed the needle into his arm to administer the aesthetics. I held him until he fell asleep and, reluctantly, let go of him. I was escorted back to the lobby, where my dad was waiting for me. He had a change of clothes and mom's coat for me to borrow on him.

I took the offered clothes and went to the bathroom to change.

It was when I was changing, that I finally noticed something odd about the blood on my clothes. The blood on my clothes was not red, it was violet.


	2. Chapter 2

It's been a few hours since that the boy was taken into the emergency room. I had refused to leave the lobby (though I did get my hands treated) until I was, for certain, assured that the child would be fine. But the fact that the blood on my clothes was violet, not red, had peaked my interest. But, I also knew that I wouldn't get any answers until the little one woke up, and if he trusted me.

I wasn't going to kid myself and say the child would trust me fully for my deed. That's expecting too much for the child. I was essentially a stranger, a kind stranger that fought back his aggressors and took him to a place to treat his injuries, but a stranger nonetheless. I was going to have to build that trust more if I wish to get more answers for the strangeness that have enveloped the day.

A doctor came in and beckoned me to follow him. As we walked, an officer joined us and proceeded to ask me a series of question about what happened.

I told it to her straight. Told the events leading up to the event and described as much as I could the appearance of the men involved with the child's injuries and the general location of the event. The officer ask the doctor the extent of the boy's injuries.

I saw red again momentarily when he explained. Four cracked ribs, a clean break in the right arm, sprained ankle, _cigarette burns_ on his left arm, a mild concussion, an injured neck, and a case of hypothermia. This isn't counting all the bruises on his person. The officer thanked us and asked us to inform the station when the child wakes up. She then bid us farewell and left.

The doctor led me to the room where the child was located and informed me that he was most likely still sleeping off his medication. He then informed me he'll come in and check on his progress every once in a while.

I just nodded my understanding and watched the doctor leave. I entered the room and walked up to the bed.

Now that I wasn't in a full blown panic and my vision wasn't tunneled due to me being a full blown mama bear right then, I studied the child. Already, the differences were obvious and told the story of a child that from another world. With his lightning shaped, candy corn colored horns, to his grey skin, to his tuff of naturally violet hair, to his fins. No, I'm not kidding, the kid had a pair of fins were his ears should be. I wouldn't be surprised to find gills under the neck brace if I were to look.

I took a chair from the other side of the room and sat next to the boy. I could already feel myself fading, the events of the day finally catching up with me. I looked over to the boy one more time, taking his hand, let out a yawn and closed my eyes.

* * *

I didn't know what happened. One moment, I was planning my next FLARPing strategy, next I falling, then landing in something cold and wet. I stood up and looked around, shivering in the extremely cold temperature.

I was in a place where everything was covered in a white substance that went up to my knees, and the dead trees surrounding me. I trudged forward, looking for something, someone, to help me. I wandered that place for a long time, I couldn't tell what the time was since the sky was over cased. I wandered until I couldn't feel my toes anymore, I was so cold.

I heard voices some distance away from me and I ran toward them. I, too cold, too scared, to think properly and use caution. I burst into a clearing where I saw some weird creatures. They had pale skin, and different colored hair and eyes. They didn't even have horns! But I could tell they weren't friendly.

They wore rags and were filthy. But, most importantly, they were adults.

I was about turn around and run for it, when an unseen third roughly grabbed my horn and dragged me back. I yelp, and struggled to get the creature to let go of my horn. He pulled roughly, making me yelp again.

He threw me in the middle of them, and they started to throw a multitude of insults to me. They called me 'freak' and 'abomination' and all sorts of other names. Then, one of them pulled out a blade and started cutting me.

They held me down and did what they wanted with me, all the while, I was screaming out for help. They cut me, punched me, kicked me, one of then even started burning my arm with a the butt end of some circular thing.

One of them back off for a moment and started to fiddle with his belt buckle. I may be only three sweeps old, but I knew that man had in store for me. I kicked and screamed even more, trying so hard to get away.

Another man, I think they were male, got tired of my scream, made me lay on my stomach and _stomped_ on my arm, _breaking_ it in _half._ I wailed out, crying out for help.

I didn't actually expect it to come though.

A branch came down on the man's, the one fiddling with his belt, head. He dropped like a stone. The one burning my arm was then kicked in the bulge, he collapsed into a heap. I looked in time to see the branch get ripped out of my savior's hands by the guy who broke my arm, only to be tackled into a choke hold. I only got to see them enough to see that they were wearing a grey coat with a fur trim on the hood before they were hauled to their feet by the only guy not unconscious at this point.

As soon as they were free, they ran toward me. I scouted back a bit before being lifted into gentle arms and placed into the coat of my savior. I looked up and saw another one of those weird creatures, only this one was helping me instead of hurting me. They had braided red hair, dark green eyes, and had a small scar over their eyebrow.

They ran until we entered what looked like a neighborhood. I wasn't really look at anything in particular, just crying and cradling my broken arm. My savior sat down in something, with me in their lap, before I felt us move again at a much faster pace.

She, she sounded like a female, started to rock and murmur small promises to try and calm me. I grabbed her shirt and just listened to her soothing voice.

Next thing I knew, we were in a large building and more of those creature's in white coats came over. They tried to take me, but I held on tighter to my savior's coat while she simultaneously tighten her hold on me. They resorted to escorting us to a large room with a lot of strange equipment.

I was set down on a berth, my savior arms still encircled around me. She continued to hold me and murmur words of comfort when they gently took my arm and inserted a needle into it. A clear liquid started to drip into it and into my arm.

It wasn't long before I started to get drowsy. The last thing I saw before falling asleep was the very caring face of my savior.

I woke up slowly, still very drowsy. First thing I noticed was how stiff my clothing seemed to have gotten, and the warmth that enveloped my left hand. Opening my eyelids felt like I was trying to lift something very heavy with only my eyelids. But when I did, I noticed that I was in a pale blue room, also someone had changed my clothes. I noticed that I couldn't move my head like I wanted to, and something heavy was keeping my right arm in place. Bringing it up, I saw that someone put a cast on it and feeling about confirmed that I had a neck brace on too.

Looking down as much as I could, I could see that someone was holding my hand. Looking to my left, I saw a little bit of my savior. She was asleep, her head resting in her other hand and slightly hunched over. I really couldn't see her well, I could only see her out of the corner of my eye.

The sound of a door opening and another of those creatures walked into the room.

And I started screaming.


	3. Chapter 3

I woke up with a jolt to the sound of screaming. I saw that the child was awake, and a frantic looking doctor, the very same doctor that guided me here from before, was standing a bit away from us. Thinking quickly, I ushered the doctor out, telling him to wait in the hall for a moment, and re-entered the room. The child was still screaming when I did, so I tried to calm him down like I did before.

I walked back to his side slowly, calmly saying reassurances.

I took a step.

"You're okay."

He still screamed, eyes screwed shut..

I took another step.

"I'm not going to let you get hurt."

He opened his yellow and violet eyes, his screaming decreasing in volume.

I took two more steps.

"You're safe here."

His screaming turned to whimpering.

I was at his side.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

I sat back down so that I was more even with him. We sat there for a while, his whimpering the only sounds in the stillness. I gave him a patient smile, very aware that the drugs in his system was messing with his head.

I waited for a few minutes to make sure that he was calm enough before I spoke again.

"He's not going to harm you. He was going to ask a couple questions about your health."

He stared at me for a bit before nodding slightly.

"Do you want me to stay here with you while he asks his questions?"

He nodded almost immediately.

"Okay, I'll go tell him that."

He grabbed my sleeve with his good hand before I could get up.

"Don't go." he said softly.

I held his hand gently, "I'm not going anywhere, I'm not even going to leave your sight."

He tightened his grip.

"See that door?" I pointed at the door behind me. "He's right outside, I'm not leaving your sight, I'm not even going to leave the room."

He just sat there for minute, staring at me. His violet eyes searching my forest green eyes for any hit of deception. He would find none. He, reluctantly, let go of my sleeve.

I stood back up and, slowly, made my way to the door. Opening it partially, I poked my head out.

"Doctor…" I glanced at his name tag, "Shumar, he's still very frighten right now. I'm going to need you to come into the room with slow movement and to use a soft voice."

"I'm aware of that Miss Rook, if you could step out for now while-."

"I promised him that I would be there for the questioning. Afterwards, you need to inform the police department of the child's condition and to send a list of questions to us so that I could question him myself. Introducing anymore humans at the moment will just send him into a panic."

The doctor wasn't amused with this, but he couldn't really argue with my logic either. The child did just go through a very traumatic experience, didn't help that was his first impression of humans either. He sighed in defeat and waited for me to open the door fully. Which I did.

I walked in front of the doctor, heading back to my seat. The doctor stopped a distance away, while I sat back down.

I rested my hand in the bed while the doctor started his question. The boy didn't answer some, such as ' _What is you name?'_ , which he didn't say anything, or ' _Where are your parents?'_ , which he gave the doctor a confused look, then proceeded to ask ' _What are parents?'_.

I wanted to cry out and hug the poor child when I heard that.

After a few more questions, Doctor Shumar left.

We just sat there for a long while, not talking or anything. He was studying my features, like I did when he was asleep.

"What are you?"

I jumped a little from the suddenness of the question.

"We call ourselves humans. What are you?"

"...I'm a troll."

The image of a cave troll from Lord of The Rings flashed through my mind before being harshly pushed away. He was obviously not one of those dumb brutes from movies and literature.

"Where are you from?"

"Alternia."

"Hn." _I have no idea where in God's good graces that is._

"Where am I?" he asked me.

I chewed my lip at that. How does one tell a child that they're on an entirely different planet?

I sighed, _like I always say, brutal honesty is better than a pretty lie._ "Your on a planet called Earth."

He froze, staring at me with a percullar look. The emotions of absolute horror and mind boggling bewilderment made sense, but the look of pure excitement, down right giddiness, that was slowly over taking his features was so very strange.

"Really!?"

I nodded dumbly.

Then he started squealing.

I blinked a few times, trying to process what the fuck was going on.

"I never thought I was going to see an alien so young."

 _What the fuck is going on?_ I thought perplexed.

"This is so exciting!"

 _Aren't you supposed to be panicking?_ Is what I wanted to say, but couldn't.

He just looked so happy, I couldn't bring a damper on this. I even found myself smiling a little bit at his enthusiasm.

"You have to tell me everything about your world, we never take time to learn about another society's history."

I brought my hands up and down in a pacifying motion, still wearing that smile. "Hey, slow down there bucko. I don't even know where to begin."

"At the beginning."

"Which one?"

"There's more then one." I could almost see stars in his eyes.

This was going to be a long, informative, but surprisingly fun day.


	4. Chapter 4

After I had thoroughly interrogated the alien, there was another knock on the door. The alien got up and answered. She came back not long after with a clipboard and pencil.

"The local authorities wanted your account of the happenings that took place earlier today." she said in a professional, yet gentle voice

I shrunk back, looking away from her. I really didn't want to revisit those particular memories so soon.

"It's okay, they're going to look for those men and bring them to justice."

I still didn't make eye contact.

 _Sigh_ "We'll start with some simple questions, alright?"

I nodded.

"What's your name?"

"..."

"Your going to have to give your name so that this could be filed as true, so it could be used in court."

"..."

 _Sigh_ "Okay, we'll just sk-."

"I'll tell you my name if you tell me yours."

She paused, looking at me with a startled look. She blinked a few times before she gave me that smile again.

I don't know why, but I could never identify the emotion that was always present when she gave me that particular smile. But yet, I couldn't help but to feel safe, comfortable, as if it's alright in the world.

It made me feel warm.

"Eliza Rook."

I barely caught that.

The alien - _Eliza,_ still giving me that smile, had a expectant look on her face.

I looked down, "Eridan, my name is Eridan Ampora."

She nodded before she wrote that down.

The questions were fairly simple after that, and they ended quickly too. We were soon back to discussing about her world.

There are so many different cultures and languages that it was pretty overwhelming. Not only that, but there are _multiple_ world leaders.

Eventually, she had to leave, saying something about visiting hours or something. I didn't want her to go, to leave me here in this strange place.

Eliza ended up staying much later, telling me stories and singing songs to soothe me. She even made so many promises to me, saying that she will be back tomorrow. I, eventually, fell asleep with dreams containing her stories and songs.

* * *

It was the longest night of my life, and I had many long nights. Eridan, the small, alien child, was all alone in a very strange world very different from his own. Alone in a building filled with strangers and too injured to flee should things get ugly. Though he had nothing to fear.

Pretty much everyone in this town had that one same belief: children are our future, their lives must be protected at all costs. Eridan will become this town's biggest secret if he stays long enough.

That 'if' echoed in my head for a moment while I stared at the support beams that made up my ceiling. If he stays, who will look after him? What would his family do? What would Eridan do?

I didn't know the answers to two out of three of those questions. I plan on asking the little one if he would be comfortable living with me and my small family of one other. Father was all for the idea to allow the little one to live with us until either Eridan grew up or his family finds him and takes him back home.

A piece of me screamed and cried when the thought of sending Eridan off at such a young age, even if it was to head back to the planet of his birth. That desperate wish that I have grown used to, the wish that I can never fulfill, begged that I keep the child and raise him as my own.

It was a selfish desire, one that I had gotten use to pushing away like the persistent fly that it was.

I finally succumbed to the blankness of my mind, only plagued by my selfish fantasies of a life too far from reach to ever become a reality.

I woke up exhausted, a very normal occurrence in my life. But I got out of that bed with vigor, getting dressed and completed my chores in record time. I was just about to head out the door, when a thought crossed my mind. I quickly scrawled a note and placed it on Father's desk, grabbed my purse with my shitty flip phone and wallet inside, and then headed out.

The walk to the hospital was quiet and quick, the snow only slowing my pace slightly. When I arrived, the hospital staff seemed almost relieved to see me. Obviously, Eridan was not making it easy on them.

So they didn't mind that I arrived several hours earlier then what visiting hours were.

I rushed back to Eridan's room, took a moment to breath, and knocked on the door.

"Go away." was the response that I got.

"Eridan? It's me, Eliza."

A quick 'come in' was what led me to being pinned to the floor with a alien child, still in the hospital gown, clinging to my waist. Apparently, he forgot my promise.

I picked him up and headed back to his bed.

"You shouldn't have gotten up, you'll just make your injuries worse and you'll end up staying longer." I scolded him lightly.

He, at least, had the decency to look down sheepishly.

But, oh my god, his blushing is absolutely adorable!

I told him so and proceeded to pinch his cheek.

For two hours, it was like that. He continued his questions about my world, though I did manage to get a few questions about his home in between his almost endless stream of questions.

At one point, I made an off-handed comment about my familial relation to a king, King John Noland. The king from those Robin Hood stories.

"You're royalty!?"

"Heaven's no, I said I was related to royalty."

He gave me a confused look.

"What's the difference?"

"Well, the difference is that I'm related to the current monarch through several generations. I'm only a very distant cousin to Queen Elizabeth, one of which I will not be able to have a snowball's chance in hell to be crowned Queen."

"Oh," he still looked confused. "how far about are you two."

"27 generations."

"Whoa, thats so many. How do you know that?"

"My mother was into researching the family tree. It's the reason I knew that I was, indeed, related to King John, through one of his daughters."

He had this blank look on his face.

"You didn't understand half of what I just said, didn't you?"

He shook his head.

"What didn't you understand." I said patently.

"Whats a mother?"

I stared at Eridan for a long moment, before sighing.

"This is going to be a long day."


End file.
